Product details

This pdf ebook is a reissue of a classic AMC education
resource, Andrew Ford's Inventing Music. "A beginner
course in composition suited to those who have not composed
before", the kit was originally published in 1991 and aimed
particularly at secondary school students and teachers, although
the majority of the exercises could also be used with primary
students.

"Coming back to Inventing Music today, nearly a quarter
of a century after it first appeared in print and almost as long
since I last read the text, the main thing that surprises me is
that I had the gall to write it. I don't think I'd have it today.
Yet the fundamentals seem about right.

The book was specifically designed for senior high school
students tackling composition in their final years at school. In
1991, this was a relatively new phenomenon. But while today we
continually hear how the school music education in Australia must
improve (and it must), composition is now more or less a core
activity and teachers feel more confident about teaching it.
Indeed it might be argued that a text such as Inventing
Music is almost redundant, not least because many of the
exercises it proposes are rather basic. I don't agree. I think we
can always return to the basics of musical composition - to the
basics of music - with profit, and it is the basic exercises in
Inventing Music I like the best.

Writing the original foreword to the book, I stressed that while
aimed at senior high school students, the majority of the
exercises could be used with primary students and also with
professionals. It remains true. When we return to the simplest
building blocks of music, we are obliged to confront the very
nature of the art. That's always a good thing. And that, I hope,
is what remains useful about Inventing Music."